Former city mayor turns 100

Former Dunedin mayor Russell Calvert, who turns 100
tomorrow, reads a birthday card at the Nelson rest-home
where he lives. Photo by The Nelson Mail.

When former Dunedin mayor Russell Calvert was interviewed
by the Evening Star in 1974, the then 65-year-old was
"horrified" at the thought of retirement. Thirty-five years on,
he still is.

Now resident at Oakwoods Village in Richmond, near Nelson, he
celebrates his 100th birthday tomorrow and is as interested
in the issues of local body politics as he was when he
campaigned for rates reform in Dunedin in the early 1950s.

"If it affects people, you become concerned," he said this
week. "And councils affect places in which people live. If
wrong decisions are made, it can make life unpleasant or
impossible."

Born in Masterton, Mr Calvert was educated in Nelson and
Wellington and moved to Dunedin during the Depression,
establishing a dental technician's laboratory in Stafford St.

He became involved with the Kew Ratepayers and Householders
Association in the 1940s, but it was as organiser of the
Dunedin Combined Ratepayers Association's 1953 campaign for
unimproved value rating that he first enjoyed local body
success.

"Winning against council - I was very pleased with that. It
was my first stride out into independence."

His council career comprised a hat trick of by-election wins
in 1958, 1961 and 1970 and a spell in the mayoralty from
1965-68, always on a platform of Labour Party principles if
not always on the party's ticket. He also had four terms on
the Town and Country Planning Appeal Board and was chairman
of the Clutha Valley Development Commission in the early
1970s.

During his time as mayor, Mr Calvert officially opened the
new learner's pool at Moana Pool and led the council which
authorised the introduction of fluoride into the city water
supply.

The visit of the Queen Mother in April 1966 stands out as a
highlight of his mayoralty, although he did not find anything
exalting or terrifying about it.

"She was a dear old soul. She had a good sense of humour and
was fairly open. It's a great privilege to be able to get
into conversation with a person of that stature. But it's not
what makes the clock turn around. There were more important
things in the world."

Such as?

"What's facing us now in this area and that - the rating
system placing burdens on people," he said.

After his first wife, Eileen, died in 1977, Mr Calvert spent
three years at the couple's holiday home in Arrowtown as
unofficial and unpaid assistant greenkeeper at the local golf
club. He and second wife Win moved to Christchurch and then
to Nelson to be near her family.

Mr Calvert has many good memories of the city.

"We had lovely friends living near us, and I had a good
little business and clients were loyal to me."

Asked if he had been following the Otago Stadium issue, he
said he had not. And anyway, he said, "if you can't do
anything about it, it's a pointless effort".

He still enjoys good health, but there is a serious note to
that "horror" of retirement - he cannot do the things he used
to and takes it hard.

"My hobbies were mostly outdoors and physical, and you get to
the stage where you're unable to go on doing them . . . But
never mind."

Mr Calvert celebrated his birthday early with a party at
Oakwoods on Wednesday, and is in Wellington this weekend for
a dinner with friends and family tomorrow.